Anthropic Versus Anthropic

Anthropic is a frustrating company. Sometimes it will do things I greatly appreciate, including at substantial cost. They have taken bold stands, have a unique governance structure and have hired and worked to establish a relatively strong (but I think still inadequate) safety culture. Other times, it will do things that are deeply disappointing. It produces very good models. That too is not entirely a good thing. One can both be the best given the alternatives, and insufficient to meet the moment. Ultimately, what you think about Anthropic depends on what parts you care about most, and what you think would be sufficient. Anthropic is great if you think the problems are important and difficult, but within the range of what Anthropic’s approaches can solve. If you think we mainly need operational excellence and caring about safety and the future, then there are some non-excellent operations to fix but that goal seems doable for Anthropic. If you think the problems go well beyond that, then things look rather grim for everyone. Today’s post begins with a continuation of discussion over Anthropic’s leaked draft bill. See my previous coverage for details of the bill, which was a variation on the Frontier Act that was stronger in some ways and weaker in others, and not clearly superior to passing nothing given how much state law it would have preempted. Tomorrow’s post will cover Anthropic’s S-1, which has now been filed with the SEC, to give me the necessary time to actually Do the Reading. Mostly. It repeats a lot. Table of Contents • Dario Amodei Responds to Nathan Calvin. • Kelsey Piper Goes Inside Anthropic. • The Technical Problems of AI Safety Are Not Solved. • The Quest for Embedded Evaluators. • METR Questions Risk Report Methodology But Affirms Risk is Low. • The Anthropic Public Benefit Fund. • Anthropic Versus Anthropic. Dario Amodei Responds to Nathan Calvin It is amazingly great that Dario Amodei responded directly, at length and with substance,